Cold War Reloaded: US missiles are threatening Moscow from Germany
(Picture ma)
by Wolfgang Effenberger*
(10 December 2021) Following the Western-orchestrated coup in Kiev at the end of February 2014, the U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC) pamphlet 525-3-1 “Win in a Complex World: 2020–2040” was adopted in October 2014.
During this period, the US armed forces are to reduce the threat from Russia and China as a matter of priority. Since then, the US/NATO manoeuvres on Russia’s doorstep have not ceased.
On 8 November 2021, the 56th US Artillery Command was reactivated for the first time since the end of the Cold War – a major US Army unit based in the Mainz-Kastel district of the city of Wiesbaden and reporting to a two-star general. Major General Stephen Maranian, stated on 3 November 2021: “The reactivation of the 56th Artillery Command will provide U.S. Army Europe and Africa with significant capabilities in multi-domain operations. It will further enable the synchronization of joint and multinational fires and effects, and employment of future long range surface to surface fires across the U.S. Army Europe and Africa area of responsibility.”1 On 10 November 2021, under the title “Dark Eagle has landed”, the British newspaper “The Sun” reported on a US nuclear force reactivated in Germany for the first time since the Cold War, equipped with hypersonic long-range missiles of the “Dark Eagle” type.
According to the US Army, Multi-Domain Operations (MDO) are intended to ensure that joint forces [Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines and Space Force] can “counter and defeat a near-peer adversary capable of contesting the U. S. in all domains [air, land, maritime, space, and cyberspace] in both in competition and armed conflict”.3
The concept goes on to describe how US ground forces, as part of the joint and multinational team, can deter adversaries and defeat highly capable, peer-to-peer adversaries in the 2025–2050 timeframe. To this end, multi-domain operations are intended to provide commanders with numerous options “for executing simultaneous and sequential operations using surprise and the rapid and continuous integration of capabilities across all domains to present multiple dilemmas to the adversary in order to gain physical and psychological advantages and influence and control over the operational environment”.4
Today we are witnessing a throwback to one of the most dangerous phases of the Cold War, when in the early 1980s, the rearmament decision was rushed through and the obsolete Pershing I missiles were replaced by the Pershing II. The increase in range from 800 to 1200 kilometres was not dramatic for a layman, but it was for the experts in the Kremlin. For now the bunkered command posts around Moscow could be taken out in just a few minutes. Reagan’s dream of a decapitation strike had become reality. In Washington, the vision “Victory is possible” haunted the halls of the Capitol.
"NATO has proactively broken off all initiatives for dialogue"
"It should be taken into account that the Western partners are aggravating the situation by supplying lethal modern weapons to Kiev and conducting provocative military manoeuvres in the Black Sea - and not only in the Black Sea, but also in other regions close to our borders. As far as the Black Sea is concerned, the recent manoeuvres
are outside certain borders. Strategic bombers flew 20 kilometres from our state borders. They carry heavy weapons, as you know.
Similarly, if not more dramatically, our relations with NATO are developing, which is taking an emphatically confrontational stance and actively moving its military infrastructure towards our borders. I have already mentioned it. Moreover, NATO has proactively broken off all initiatives for dialogue. We will respond in an appropriate manner to NATO's military activities on the edges of Russia's borders."
Source: Vladimir Putin on 19 November 2021 https://de.rt.com/kurzclips/127393-putin-bewaffnete-strategische-bomber/ (Transcript of his statement on RT/Translation from German “Swiss Standpoint”)
A well-known advocate of an offensive war strategy to be implemented with nuclear weapons was the British-American military strategist and professor of International Relations and Strategic Studies at the University of Reading, Colin Spencer Gray. His credo since 1980:
“Soviet leaders will only be impressed by a credible American strategy for victory. Such a doctrine would have to contemplate the death of the Soviet state. The United States should plan to defeat the Soviet Union at a cost that does not prevent US recovery. Washington should pursue war aims that ultimately seek the destruction of Soviet political authority and the emergence of a world order compatible with Western values.”5
Against the will of the people and despite all protests, the German Bundestag approved the deployment of the “Pershing II” missiles and cruise missiles on 22 November 1983.6
In times of Corona – or is it the permanent war propaganda against Russia? – the deployment of missile systems threatening Moscow, which is especially dangerous for Germany, is hardly noticed.
A few days after the new deployment, on 15 November 2021, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson warned Germany, France, Italy and other European governments at a banquet before City of London dignitaries:
“And we hope that our friends may recognise that a choice is shortly coming between mainlining ever more Russian hydrocarbons in giant new pipelines and sticking up for Ukraine and championing the cause of peace and stability, let me put it that way.”7
Boris Johnson has no qualms about seeing Europe’s gas trade with Russia as more of a dirty drug addiction than a mutual trading partnership. Consequently, Johnson, who counts the wartime leader Winston Churchill among his political heroes, advises Europe to refrain from supplying natural gas from Russia and instead defend Ukraine and Poland.
In this context, he proudly refers to the British soldiers building barbed wire fences on the Polish-Belarusian border to stop the flow of refugees from Belarus and, in Orwellian new-speak, presents it as an example of the “defence of Europe”. The military escalation since the Western-orchestrated coup in Ukraine has escalated rapidly in recent years and is now at a dangerous peak.
Let’s just hope that this small US/UK warmongering elite can still be put in its place. It would be extremely tragic if the solemn promise made in the preamble to the UN Charter on 26 June 1945 in San Francisco on behalf of the peoples to practice tolerance and to live together in friendly relations were to finally end up in the dustbin of history.
The UN of 1945, like the League of Nations of 1919, arose from the strategic thinking of the victors. In contrast to the Peace of Westphalia of 1648, the will for peace and reconciliation was lacking after both world wars. So it is not surprising that after more than a hundred years, on the one hand, the unhealed wounds of the First World War are reopening everywhere and, on the other hand, the USA is pursuing a worldwide imperial geopolitics, especially in Europe.
This goal was made clear for all the world by the founder and director of the world’s leading private US think tank in the field of geopolitics, STRATFOR (abbreviation for Strategic Forecasting), George Friedman, on 3 February 2015:
“The primary interest of the USA, for which we have been fighting the wars for a century – World War I, World War II and the Cold War8 – was the relationship between Germany and Russia. Because united, they are the only power that can threaten us, and our interest has always been to make sure that doesn’t happen.”9
Against this background, the reactivation of the 56th US Artillery Command is logical and the threat posed by Germany to Russia is compelling. The consequences of a Third World War for Germany and Russia will far exceed all the suffering and misery of the 20th century.
It is time to finally form a community of nations born of the will for peace.
This will only be possible if people stop being frightened and start questioning everything and say goodbye to a one-sided culture of remembrance, which in reality is the disguise of forgetting and a breeding ground for appeasement.10 At this point I would like to bring to mind Joseph [Joschka] Fischer, who justified the war of aggression against Serbia, which was contrary to international law, with “Never again Auschwitz!”.
Without truthfulness towards history, there can be no sustainable peace. For a peaceful coexistence of the European states in the Council of Europe, the imperial plans of a small plutocratic US/UK elite must be stopped.
| * Wolfgang Effenberger, born 1946, is a journalist and author of numerous books. He publishes in German. Here are three of his latest books: “Wiederkehr der Hasardeure, Schattenstrategen, Kriegstreiber, stille Profiteure 1914 und heute”; “Geo-Imperialismus: Die Zerstörung der Welt”, 2016. Most recently, the following was published “Schwarzbuch EU & NATO”, 2021 (https://zeitgeist-online.de/2013-11-30-00-57-32/1097-wolfgang-effenberger-schwarzbuch-eu-nato.html).1 |
(Translation “Swiss Standpoint”)
1 https://www.janes.com/defence-news/news-detail/us-army-reactivates-56th-artillery-command-in-europe
2 https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/16695568/us-nuclear-germany-eagle-hypersonic-missiles-moscow/
3 https://sgp.fas.org/crs/natsec/IF11409.pdf
4 https://sgp.fas.org/crs/natsec/IF11409.pdf
5 Article by Gray. Victory is possible. In the magazine Foreign Policy, summer edition 1980, p. 22
6 https://www.spiegel.de/geschichte/25-jahre-proteste-gegen-nachruestung-a-947980.html
8 See Wolfgang Effenberger: Das amerikanische Jahrhundert Die verborgenen Seiten des Kalten Krieges. Norderstedt 2011
9 The Chicago Council on Global Affairs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QeLu_...
10 See Christian von Krockow: Einspruch gegen den Zeitgeist. Hamburg 2002, p. 32